Driving in Phuket Town: a City Instead of a Coastline

The island's only city

Everywhere else on Phuket you are driving between places. Here you are driving inside one. That means multi-lane roads, traffic lights, junctions with dedicated turning lanes, buses, delivery vans and a permanent haze of scooters.

For a lot of visitors this is more familiar than the coast roads, not less. If you drive in a city at home, the vocabulary here is the same. What is different is the density of two-wheeled traffic and the way turns are organised.

It is also the flattest driving on the island. There is no descent to manage and no climb to plan for. What you spend attention on instead is the traffic around you, which never quite stops moving.

It is also the part of the island where a car is most useful for practical errands rather than sightseeing. The large supermarkets, the hardware shops, the government offices and the hospitals are all here, and all of them assume you arrived in something with four wheels and a boot.

How the traffic behaves

The single thing to understand here is the U-turn. On the main divided roads you often cannot turn right across the traffic. Instead you continue past your destination, use a marked U-turn slot in the central reservation and come back on the other side. It feels wrong for a day and then becomes second nature.

Get into the correct lane early. U-turn slots and turning lanes are marked well in advance, and cutting across two lanes of scooters at the last moment is the classic visitor mistake.

Scooters occupy every gap, including the space to your left as you turn into a side street. Before any turn and before any door opens, check the mirror on that side. This is not a formality here, it is the thing that prevents almost every avoidable incident in town.

The flow itself is calm. Nobody races, horns are used as a gentle notice rather than a complaint, and drivers let each other in. Match that and you will find it easy.

Parking by city rules

Town parking follows the same colour code as the rest of Thailand and it is enforced more consistently here than at the beaches. Red and white kerb means no stopping. Yellow and white means drop-off only. Plain kerb is generally fine unless a sign says otherwise.

Covered and multi-storey car parks are the practical answer for anything longer than a quick errand. They are inexpensive, they keep the car out of the sun, and they remove the risk entirely.

Watch for restricted hours on some central streets, and for the days when a market or an event closes streets to traffic altogether. On those evenings, park well out from the centre and walk in.

Two small habits pay off in a city: reverse into spaces so you pull out forwards into traffic you can see, and fold the mirrors in tight lanes.

• Read the kerb colour before leaving the car anywhere
• Use covered car parks for anything longer than an errand
• Reverse into spaces so you drive out facing the traffic
• Park outside the centre on market and event evenings

Getting out of town

North is the fastest road on the island, running straight to the airport and the northern beaches on flat ground. It is also where the speed cameras are, so keep to the posted limits.

West takes you over the hill to Patong, the busiest exit and the one that involves a real descent. Do it in daylight the first time.

South leads to Chalong and the southern beaches through the corridor everyone uses, which means it moves well outside peak hours and slowly inside them.

Being in the middle of the island is genuinely useful. From here, both coasts and both ends are within an easy outing, and no single trip is long enough to eat a whole day.

One habit is worth building early: check the fuel before you leave town rather than after. The stations here are numerous and easy to use, and the roads out of town are exactly where you do not want to be looking for one.